In a movie theatre, audio content associated with a movie is typically played back using a loudspeaker setup including a plurality of loudspeakers distributed along the walls of the room in which the movie is shown. The loudspeaker setup may also include ceiling-mounted loudspeakers and one or more subwoofers. The loudspeaker setup may for example be intended to recreate an original sound field present at the time and place where the current scene of the movie was recorded or to recreate a virtual sound field of a three-dimensional computer-animated scene. As a movie theatre comprises seats located at different positions relative to the loudspeakers, it may be difficult to convey a desired audio experience to each person watching the movie. The perceived audio quality and/or the fidelity of the recreated sound field may therefore be less than optimal for at least some of the seats in the movie theatre.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,107,023 proposes the use of near-field speakers to add depth information that may be missing, incomplete, or imperceptible in far-field sound waves from far-field speakers, and to remove the multichannel cross-talk and reflected sound waves that otherwise may be inherent in a listening space with the far-field speakers alone. The contents of U.S. Pat. No. 9,107,023 are incorporated by reference in its entirety herein. In other words, audio output from near-field speakers located close to a listener's ears is employed to supplement audio output from a regular loudspeaker setup.
It would be advantageous to provide new ways of generating and playing back near-field audio content, for example to improve the fidelity of the sound field provided by the combination of far-field audio content (e.g., played back by far-field loudspeakers) and near-field audio content.
All the figures are schematic and generally only show parts which are necessary in order to elucidate the example embodiments, whereas other parts may be omitted or merely suggested.